[HN Gopher] The non-linear workdays changing the shape of produc...
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The non-linear workdays changing the shape of productivity
Author : mustafabisic1
Score : 29 points
Date : 2022-10-06 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| bingooooo wrote:
| A great way to get burned out as work encroaches on every aspect
| of your life. No thank you.
| maccard wrote:
| Not necessarily. Ive worked with American companies from the UK
| for most of my career. A flexible work environment means I can
| go golfing at 9:30 on a Tuesday morning when it's sunny and my
| partner is in the office, or I can work a Saturday morning when
| I want a Monday morning as a swap because I have a concert on
| the next city over and I won't make the last train home (both
| of these are examples of what I've done in the last 6 months).
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Agreed. My gf was recently asked to attend 5am meetings on her
| thursdays and Fridays. Her stance is a little different than
| mine, I would've outright refused but she accepted. Her boss
| said she could go back to sleep right after the meetings but we
| all know that's not as easy as it sounds
| mattbee wrote:
| I work exactly as this article describes, but 25 hours per
| week.
|
| It feels like I am doing the productive 25 hours of a 37 hour
| work week. I log my hours pretty accurately, which I think
| makes it a better deal for my employer - no commuting, nothing
| social, and I'm picking the most productive hours for me. I've
| also got some freedom to switch between tasks (writing, coding,
| it's largely only teaching needs me to stick to appointments).
|
| It absolutely feels like work fitting around my life (kids,
| gym, family visits) rather than the other way round.
|
| I work some (even most) evenings, but only because I like to
| take bits of the day "off".
|
| I agree this would be a horrible encroaching way to work for an
| employer who expects tHE exTRa MiLe, but those guys are
| horrible to work for already.
| leetrout wrote:
| It depends on what you are doing throughout the day.
|
| I think you are right that people may likely spend more time
| working in the end.
|
| We are all different, though.
|
| My ideal situation is to do deep work for 4 hours everyday and
| focus on the marathon not the dash.
| calderwoodra wrote:
| agreed - for me I prefer to do customer support, meetings and
| bug fixing in the morning, then deep focus work after 10pm.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >In decades past, non-linear workdays used to be fairly uncommon.
|
| They still are fairly uncommon. Source: traffic jams.
|
| But for real. There is a trend to be a little more flexible, yet
| most places in the world continue to require the most obvious
| candidates for both remote and _asynchronous_ work to function
| 'hybrid' and synchronously. It's incredibly telling Tuesdays and
| Thursdays are the days everything ends up jammed here.
|
| If that wasn't enough, the 'we are doing Scrum' movement heavily
| pushes synchronous stand-ups and other meetings in the morning.
| Since most places also require video (yuck), good luck trying to
| just sit at a meeting and then go back to bed. If your ideal is
| to work the latter half of the day, we're still a far cry from
| normalizing it. I'd wager you can replace 'Scrum' with something
| else equally applicable in other disciplines.
|
| Worst part is, we're still forcing the workerbees to fit the 9-5
| rhythm, but the services are _also_ working on a 9-5 rhythm. So
| how does Worker Bee use a service only available when they should
| be working? Not their problem, that 's your problem (no
| seriously, who designed this structure?)
| someweirdperson wrote:
| non-contiguous?
| jakzurr wrote:
| I suppose that'd be anything except five 8-hour blocks of time,
| one each day of five in a row, always at the same times of day.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Something that the software industry has to assimilate eventually
| is that unless your organization is very efficient, there's not a
| big difference between working for 6 or 10 hours a day.
|
| Scrum / agile / whatever as understood by most companies does not
| prevent context switching, synchronous work that could be done
| asynchronously, and interruptions. When added together, those
| things shrink your team's capacity massively. I'm talking real
| capacity, not some magical number made up at some meeting.
|
| Work could be relatively linear. The people who can make it
| happen just don't care or are clueless about it.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| small but important correction...
|
| > However, when society industrialised, a rigid, five-day,
| 40-hour workweek arose in factory settings
|
| ummm... no. More like the 6 day 16 hour per day work-week arose
| in factory settings.
|
| The five-day, 40-hour workweek was fought and died for by the
| labor movement.
| fritolaid wrote:
| in tech, we don't really have 40hr/wk. It's more like 80hr/wk.
| And work on weekends. If you have a position that requires
| 40hrs/wk or less and no work on weekends whatsoever, consider
| yourself lucky. I hear stories about colleagues being
| overworked on continuous basis.
| maccard wrote:
| And meanwhile I hear stories of people clocking in 40 hour
| weeks on a continuous basis. The reality is that both exist.
| oakesm9 wrote:
| I assume this is referring to the US?
|
| I don't know anyone who does much over 40 hours in the UK,
| let alone anything close to 80 hours. A few might pick up
| urgent tasks on the weekend, but only when needed and not
| regularly.
| huile wrote:
| jdminhbg wrote:
| The 40-hour workweek is the result of massive productivity
| gains; the labor movement is just a sideshow to the longue
| duree of progress.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| If the length of our work week followed productivity, the
| workweek would be at 13 hours today. Your claim is completely
| and utterly baseless.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Productivity gains do not lead to increased worker benefit,
| they lead to increased owner benefit. Organized labor leads
| to increased worker benefit.
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